Excessively aggressive child and infant removal from parents by Tennessee child services reported by WMBB on 3/19/23…..Shocking? Of local interest? This action in Tennessee doesn’t make any more sense than when it happens in Bay County, too. Third party contractors with financial incentives to remove, shelter and place children in state supervised dependency foster care have too much unchallenged authority and parents have too little recourse in this abusive system that often places children in potentially worse risk in foster homes where they represent supplemental income to the foster family, while the state also pays for child daycare services on behalf of the foster family. Could financial benefit be a motive? Faith communities need to stand with children and families to support families and question the system.
Is it an acceptable community standard to have as a female toddler’s primary caregiver a retired unrelated male who reportedly has acknowledged an addictive issue with pornography to others? Why would such an individual seek responsibility for a very young unrelated child, or possibly multiple young children in their home, other than income?
Too many aging-out foster children themselves witness to having been abused by adults and other juveniles “in the system” and yet it continues to have nearly unaccountable power to violate parental rights, withhold information, misrepresent facts, abuse authority and turn a deaf ear to questions.
Five or six years ago Bay County had the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of state child dependency placement in Florida, and many were being placed out of Bay County. Today that reported county-by-county information is virtually impossible to find in an easy-to-locate public record for that time period and the years since. There is, however, proudly posted information about how adoptions of children from state dependency care have increased. And that is hailed as a positive indicator of family and child wellbeing in our community??? What is the rate of successful family reunification vs. adoption from state dependency care for Bay County compared to others? Does it even matter? I believe it does for those families that find themselves “in the system.”
March 19, 2023
Child Dependency Issues in News
There were quite a few comments about this case on WMBB’s FB page of this Tennessee case, but how often do we see anything reported about the state of child dependency services in our own county?